


The Trees Can Only Listen

by HollowIsTheWorld



Category: One Piece
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, au where law actually gets to deal with the shit hes been through, corazon lives au, dealing with grief, kid law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8371864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowIsTheWorld/pseuds/HollowIsTheWorld
Summary: Asking should not have been so hard. But it felt like allowing his old life into his new one and something about the merging of the two felt… He didn’t know how it felt. Wrong, somehow.





	

Asking should not have been so hard. It wasn’t as though Corazon was going to say  _ no _ . They weren’t using the space for anything else, and Corazon was always happy to give Law whatever he asked for anyway.

But the fact had remained that he did not want to ask. It felt like allowing his old life into his new one and something about the merging of the two felt… He didn’t know how it felt. Wrong, somehow.

Still, he had managed to ask. Staring at the floor, jaw tense, fists clenched at his side, he’d asked for a stretch of the garden; as far from the house as he could get. He knew exactly where he wanted it, exactly how much space he would need. He’d measured it carefully one day while Corazon was at the shop without him.

“I want it to be mine,” he said, not looking up. “I don’t want you to touch anything there.” It sounded nasty and he winced at his own voice. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to remove the barbs from his own words when he spoke sometimes.

Corazon didn't say anything until Law looked up, but then he nodded. “Okay. It’s all yours. Just let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Law needed plenty, but this was going to be  _ his _ . Before anything else, he needed it to be his.

He’d had most of it planned before he’d worked up the nerve to ask for permission. He had the money he needed saved. He knew which three trees he was getting. He knew where he would plant them and how much space they would need and how much attention from him they’d require. He’d spent hours in the library researching, both for himself and for Corazon’s new flower shop. It had all seemed like a fever dream when they had first started talking about it - a house, a garden, a shop, school, Law living long enough to see any of it - but it was slowly settling in around him. It was oddly comforting, despite the way Law couldn’t shake off the idea that it was all too easy to lose all of this and he shouldn’t let himself relax into it just yet.

This though. This was a real step towards staking his claim on his new life; a life he’d been certain had been taken from him before he’d had a chance to even consider it.

Law braced himself for questions every time he began work on his new patch of garden; wondering how long it would take for Corazon to start asking what he was doing, or why he was doing it. But something seemed to have passed between them when Law had asked for the space, and Corazon always seemed to be fully engrossed in something else whenever Law started working.

Not that that was always a good thing. One day he’d been so captivated by his newspaper that he’d forgotten about his cigarette and lit the paper, the table, and himself on fire.

The day he finished, he merely sat down on the grass, tipped his head back, and imagined how it would look when the trees were fully grown. None of them were taller than him yet, but they’d grow quickly enough.

One for his mother. One for his father. One for his sister.

“I know they aren’t as good as graves,” he said to the air above the topmost branches. “I know you’re not…  _ here _ . But this is as good as I can manage, so I - I hope it’s good enough. I can’t - I don’t know what else I could do.”

The wind rustled the leaves, bringing a light spray with it from the ocean Law could distantly hear washing up on the beach. It wasn’t a big island; he could hear the ocean from almost anywhere. And their house was on the outskirts of it, with a good view of the water on clear days.

He sat there, watching the trees, wondering if there was anything else he should say, and at what point it would become ridiculous to keep talking to them, as the sun slowly pulled itself lower and lower towards the line of the ocean and the horizon.

“Law! Dinner!” Corazon yelled, punctuated by a yelp as he hit his head on the doorframe.

Law rolled his eyes. “Be right there!” He looked back at the trees. “That’s Cora-san. He… Well, I’ll tell you about him sometime, okay? I promise I’ll always make time to talk to you.”

He couldn’t seem to find anything to talk about during dinner. It was as though he’d forgotten how to speak.

“You weren’t working on anything while you were out there,” Corazon said, his voice unconvincingly casual. “Did you get everything how you want it?”

“I think so.” Law stabbed a piece of fish more viciously than necessary. “It’s still mine though.”

“Of course.” He hesitated, and then- “Do you-”

“No.”

“Okay.”

They were quiet for a while. Law wondered if he’d been too harsh, if he’d crossed one of those lines he was desperately trying to stay on the right side of. Corazon had been right; the Donquixote Family had been poisoning him. Next to that, removing the lead poisoning from his body had been easy.

“Do you want to come to the shop with me tomorrow?” Corazon asked at last, and if he was upset Law couldn’t tell. “I have some new shipments coming in and you’re so much better with the paperwork than I am.”

Law smirked. “You’d be better at it if you didn’t spend all your time making friends with the people delivering it.”

“I’m making contacts. It’s important. You said so yourself!”

“Sure, Cora-san. Whatever makes you feel better. Yeah, I’ll go with you. I want to look into getting the shop fire insurance anyway.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to pretend you’re being sarcastic.”

And that was it. Corazon continued to pay no mind to Law’s three trees on the far edge of their garden. Law continued to not want to talk about them, unsure about what he would say.

The trees grew. Law began to go to school for the first time in three years and found that school was generally the same wherever he went. Despite the time that had passed, he still remembered how to study and jumped to the top of the class without much effort. The flower shop got off the ground. It would never make them rich, but neither of them needed rich. It paid for what they needed, with money leftover for occasional splurges. It was enough. Something in Law slowly relearned how to breathe, how to settle.

And every night he found a slice of time to talk to his parents and sister.

“I don’t think the scars are ever going to fade,” he said one night, raising his arms as though the trees would be able to see them better that way. The white splotches stood out more now than they had before. Between gardening, school, and walking to the shop, he was outside enough for the rest of his skin to have tanned. No one asked about them though. No one here would ever recognize them for what they were, and Law’s glare was more than enough to chase off the more curious ones. If they wondered about it behind his back he didn’t know and he didn’t care. “I don’t know if it’s because I messed up while I was taking the poison out, or if there’s just no way to get rid of scarring like this once it starts, but if they were going to fade I think it would have happened by now.”

He sighed, running his fingers across one large splotch on his left wrist. It wasn’t dead skin like it looked like it should be, but it didn’t feel quite like the rest of his skin either. It was cooler, for one, and drier. “I don’t like being reminded,” he confessed. “About any of it. About what happened to Flevance, or about… About what I did after that, or all the hospitals that wouldn’t treat me because of it.”

He looked up at the trees, glanced between the one on his right and the one on his left. “You wouldn’t have done that, right, Mom? Dad? Even if we’d been from somewhere else, if we hadn’t known… You wouldn’t have thrown out a sick patient like that just because you were scared, right? Doctors are supposed to help people who need them. Not…” He trailed off with a shudder, remembering the horrified screams, the shouts for quarantines. Corazon’s hand on the back of his neck, pulling him away from them as he shouted back at the doctors for their lack of compassion. The heat of Corazon’s started fires at his back, and the way it never touched the chill in his blood that coursed through him every time he heard the word ‘monster’.

“ _ I’d _ never do that,” he said definitively. “If I ever had a patient that needed me it wouldn’t matter what they were sick with, or who they were, or what anyone else had to say. I’d  _ never _ refuse to treat someone who needed a doctor.”

He pulled absentmindedly at a loose string on his jacket. He felt like he’d been working up to what he had to say next since he’d begun thinking about planting these trees, but he didn’t feel any more prepared than he had then, despite the months that had passed between.

“I know I let you down,” he said at last. “If you were… I don’t know how much you know, how much you can see, from wherever you are. But if you saw anything about where I was for those couple of years I know you’d be disappointed in me. I know you raised me to be better than that. I’m sorry. I - I’m going to be better from now on. I promise. I’m going to be someone you’d be proud to call your son and your brother again. Cora-san is… I never want you to feel like I’m replacing you, but he’s a really good father. Even if he’s really weird sometimes. Usually. Almost always. He… He’ll make sure I don’t go down that path again. I’m going to make him proud, and I’m going to make you proud too.”

The wind picked up again and Law shivered against it. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them tightly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again. He rested his forehead against his knees and closed his eyes.

He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he woke up to Corazon’s hand on his shoulder. “It’s late, Law. come back inside.”

Law looked up. The sun had vanished completely, and wherever the sky could be seen through the clouds it was only blackness and starlight. The wind had picked up and had an icy bite to it. “Oh,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“I know. Come on, you’ll freeze out here.”

Law sat up, but he hesitated about rising to his feet. The trees were in front of him. Corazon was kneeling beside him. With the wind rushing around them and the blackness overhead it felt like the rest of the world had melted away somewhere.

“They’re for my family,” he said, looking at the trees. “The navy burned all the bodies, so they don’t have graves.”

Corazon was quiet for a minute, then squeezed his shoulder. “That’s a good way to remember them. I bet they’d like it.”

“I hope so. I want… I want to know I’ve done something they’d be proud of. I’ve let them down a lot.” He was crying and he lifted his arm in an attempt to wipe the tears away before Corazon could see them.

“I’m sure they’re proud, Law. You’ve been through a lot. You’re a strong person. That’s something to be proud of.”

Law shrugged one shoulder, thinking of burning cities and the echo of gunfire, of the way his mouth had learned that smiles could be cruel.

“Come on. It’s late and you have school tomorrow.”

“I’m smarter than any of the kids in my class,” Law protested as he took Corazon’s hand to pull himself up. “I want to skip a grade.”

“You’re going to try to skip all of school, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to be a doctor. And I want to become one fast.”

“What are you going to do if you become a doctor as a teenager? Who’s going to let a teenager operate on them?”

“ _ You _ did.”

Corazon pressed a hand down on the top of Law’s head, squishing his hat down against his skull. “My options were limited.”

Law swatted Corazon’s hand away, smirking despite himself. As they reached their door, he glanced back at the trees. “I think they’d like you,” he said softly.

Corazon hovered in the doorway. Law didn’t look at him. “Come on,” Corazon said at last, his voice so quiet Law could barely hear it. “Bed.” His words were strained, choked off a little, like he might be about to cry. Law didn’t look up at his face to see if he was.

Law turned slowly back to the house. The wind kicked up again and a powerful gust of it pushed him forward, stumbling through the door. Inside, something about the house seemed changed. Softer. Warmer. A place where Law could look into the future and see something worth having, worth reaching for. It looked like home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr.](http://will-of-his-own.tumblr.com/)


End file.
